Crystal Coffin (26 page)

Fletcher swallowed the last of his meal without tasting it. Underwood had that look on his face that said that the really bad news was still to come.

‘And?' he prompted.

‘And …' Underwood mimicked as he swallowed hard, ‘these are some of the files that I was able to download off her PC before she unplugged. I deleted them off her hard drive as I downloaded them, but there's no way to know how many backup copies she made.'

Underwood handed three photos across the table and Fletcher studied them. The acid in his stomach rose to his throat and he couldn't tell if it was the spicy steak that gave him heartburn or the fact that one little country town could suddenly give him so much trouble.

They were pictures of the crystal coffin, laid out on its purple satin bedding. Risen as if from beyond a grave and laughing at him were a pair of silver angel earrings. Beautiful. Handcrafted from the finest sterling silver that money could buy. Paid for in blood.

He flicked through the photos again to the darkest shot. Taken from what looked like shoulder height in a dark room, the reflection of the flash off the crystal made the edges of the photo dark. But on the far side of the table from the photographer, three sets of legs below hip height could just be seen. One set appeared to be medium build and muscled like an athlete, one skinnier and short, like a teenager and the other short but solid, like a middleaged man with a belly that's just starting to sag.

He studied the other photos over again, wondering how many other people could have been there.

‘You said she unplugged. Did she know you'd spotted her, or did she just finish and get off coincidentally?'

Underwood took another sip of courage from his coffee. ‘That's one of the drawbacks of having to use an automated program written by a hacker,' he said. ‘On a rush job there's no time to edit out all their ego.'

‘So she knows.'

‘I think the message she got nearly scared the baby out of her. She was typing exit commands faster than my wife can empty my wallet.' Underwood downed the last of his coffee. ‘This is out of control,' he added quietly. ‘I recommend terminating the project. Relocate and start again somewhere else.'

‘I can't terminate,' Fletcher cut in. ‘The buyers are already on their way. Stage three of the deal is going down tonight.'

‘Can you relocate the exchange then?' Underwood asked, cautious not to overstep his authority. ‘Find somewhere close enough that Maitland can still get the work done and make the rendezvous in time, but still far enough away that someone won't interrupt?'

Fletcher was already thinking about that. There was still time to contact the buyers and the pilot, maybe even time enough to vary the approved flight path so he wouldn't alert either civilian or military air traffic controllers along the way to any suspicious air traffic. But there was no way he could hunt up another landing site nearby.

‘The bird's got webbed feet,' he said, referring to the Cessna Caravan that was fitted with floats. ‘She can virtually land in a puddle, but she needs a longer stretch of flat water to take off again. I know Somerset Dam is only half an hour away, but after seven years of drought, it's little more than a mud wallow now.'

Fletcher wished he could send half a dozen of his men to neutralise the situation, but he'd been careful to weed out anyone from his organisation who could think for themselves, and the security of this deal was too important to leave to instructions.

‘I'll go myself,' he decided. ‘I'll leave now.' He paid for his meal and Underwood's coffee, and waited for the cop to open the door.

‘I'll arrange an alibi,' Underwood said, pushing it open. ‘I'll write up a follow-up interview report or something to say that I spoke to you at the gallery tonight. You can backdate your signature when you get back.'

Fletcher nodded as the cop let him through, realising that Underwood was a thinking man too. But at least he knew his place.

Nikki unpegged Bobby's bedsheets from the clothesline and Thorna picked up the bottom corners to help fold them so they wouldn't touch the dusty ground.

‘Would you like fresh bedsheets in your room?' Thorna asked. ‘They might help you sleep better.'

‘What makes you think I didn't sleep?' Nikki asked, wondering for a second if Thorna was the person with orders to keep an eye on her instead of Locklin.

‘All the bumping last night,' Thorna said. ‘I thought you must have been tossing and turning, with your bed bumping against the wall.'

‘I don't think so,' she fibbed, still wondering what the noise had been. ‘I thought it was you.'

‘Must have been Eric,' Thorna decided. ‘I don't remember smelling whisky on him, but I could be used to it. He often walks an alcoholic's definition of a straight line before bed,' she said. ‘If you know what I mean.'

Nikki smiled, looking forward to living with a family man who sounded benign compared to Fletcher for a change. ‘Will I get to meet him today?'

Thorna frowned, taking her daughter's spotted socks and panties off the line. Practically everything the six year old wore had a spot on it, while her twin brother had a tendency to wear stripes or dinosaurs.

‘Don't be so keen to meet him,' Thorna said, folding a shirt into the laundry trolley. ‘He's got a temper.'

‘My stepfather has a temper,' she confided. ‘I can handle that. Will he be back today?' she asked, still trying to get an answer without sounding too insistent.

‘If he's not here, he's working at that stupid boathouse he calls his studio. He's a painter, you know, and once he gets going he loses all track of time.'

‘You have a boathouse?' Nikki asked with the first hint of excitement she'd felt in ages. ‘On the lake? Can I take the kids for a swim? I can give you some time to yourself. You must need it.'

Thorna paled, feeling guilty again. ‘That's the nicest thing anyone's offered me in ages,' she confided.

‘Great, I'll take them after school today.'

‘No!' Thorna said more sternly than she meant. ‘He won't like that. Eric, I mean. It's his place. That's where he gets his in-spir-a-tion,' she said, wiggling her fingers and mimicking a mysterious voice with more sarcasm than her age befitted. ‘I'd never hear the end of it if I let the kids disturb him there.'

‘Oh, okay,' Nikki said, wondering if he'd mind her popping in to visit by herself.

‘It's about time I left to pick the kids up anyway,' Thorna said, two seconds before the two o'clock alarm on her watch went off. ‘I've got to pay some bills at the post office first, and I've got shopping to do afterwards, but we've broken the back of what had to be done here. Why don't you take the afternoon off? Maybe get the workman to saddle up a horse and take you for a ride? We can get into this again tomorrow.'

‘Tomorrow? What about tonight? I've got nothing better to do.'

‘Tonight's the church carnival,' Thorna said, picking Bobby up out of the gravel. ‘The kids have been looking forward to it for weeks. Want to come?'

‘No thanks,' Nikki said, pushing the trolley towards the laundry. A quiet night alone wouldn't hurt her either.

Locklin watched her from the stables. The dye was drying nicely on Jack's face and legs and it had been good to catch a few winks on the hay after staying awake all night waiting for Maitland. But the stitches in his leg itched him awake and he needed to pull them out before they drove him crazy. He pulled out the four in his shoulder too, but there were two in his leg that wouldn't budge without a fight and he left them there trying to put up with them until they were ready. He was awake now and keen to use his last few hours to find out anything else that he could.

2.15pm and still no sign of Maitland. He paced without realising it inside one of the empty stalls, watching Nikki on the verandah through the open top half of a stable door.

She adjusted a deckchair in the shade and lazed into it, letting her head roll to the left to watch the brood mares grazing. He used to do that too, he remembered, years earlier when he was supposed to be doing his homework. Only he used to sneak off now and then, climb up onto the mares bareback, lie back and watch the clouds while they grazed. Strange, he thought, that someone so close to the centre of his turmoil could remind him of innocent times.

He tried to push the thought away but it was back to nag him again as soon as he noticed the second deckchair beside her. It was a red one that he'd helped his father paint when he was ten, only you couldn't tell so easily that it was red now, with its paint all but seared away by a decade of morning suns.

‘What do you reckon, Jack?' he asked, patting his horse as soon as he stuck his nose out from his stall. ‘Should I go up there?'

Jack whinnied, more intent on gaining the affections of a fine-boned black filly that was making eyes at him from her day yard. The stallion pawed his stall door, shaking the whole shed and Locklin put him in with her, thinking that his kid sister's horse was probably ready to be put to the stud anyway. The mare had missed her first two seasons and her back was old enough now to take the strain.

‘Go easy on her, mate,' he told the stallion, who bucked and chased the flirting mare around the yard.

Go easy on her myself, he thought, turning his attention to another kind of filly. The cattle dog followed him across the crusty lawn, wagging its tail, which seemed to squeak in time with the collar that swung heavy around its neck.

Locklin signalled his dog to sit at the bottom of the steps and his boots padded lightly up the timber treads. As he got closer, he realised she was asleep.

Her blouse was crumpled at each button, and he could see her skin between, but it wasn't as a voyeur that he stooped lower for a closer look.

He could see the angel, limp at the bottom of her plaited chain, and as his senses filled with the scent of baby soap rising from her hair, his eyes fixed on the angel, rising and falling against her breast as if it was napping too. He stopped his finger short of touching it, feeling his heart thump against his chest pocket where the matching earrings were safely stashed. He needed to ask her about them, but didn't know how to do that without revealing who he was and what he wanted.

He backed away, disgusted with himself. He could attack a militia stronghold single-handed, kill eleven men and rescue prisoners, but he couldn't wake one skinny girl on friendly soil to ask her a handful of simple questions.

He turned back to the steps and as his foot touched the first tread, he heard a deliberate cough behind him. He looked back and saw her staring at him.

‘You wanted something?'

‘No,' he said, feeling his gut twist up. ‘I mean, yes. I was going to ask…'

‘Ask what?'

‘Ask if you would … ah …' He looked at the roses as if the rest of his sentence was hidden in the garden. She looked at him, waiting, as the black mare whinnied again at his stallion. ‘… like to go riding,' he finished, hoping that might give him a better opportunity to achieve his objective without roping her to a chair and beating out the answers he needed.

‘Have you been talking to Mrs Maitland?'

‘No,' he said, wondering why she'd say that. ‘I saw you watching the horses.'

Nikki could tell he was dancing around something and she didn't see the point in doing that. Whether he was working for her stepfather or not, the two detectives showing up to question her should have been the biggest question in his head, if only out of idle curiosity. ‘Don't you want to ask me about the cops?' she said, preferring to get it over with.

The dog wandered up the steps uninvited and sat between them, and Locklin scratched its ears, thankful for the distraction. He knew someone had hurt her. He'd seen her explaining something to police, often using her hands as if describing something. She had a surname hanging off her that stood the hair on the back of his neck on end, but he'd seen the cops give her a mobile phone, which hung from the waist of her jeans even now. And he'd seen them leave without arresting her. They all had to be on the same side. He just had to figure out how.

‘Only if you want to tell me about it,' he said. ‘It's your business, remember … So?'

‘So what?'

‘So do you want to come for a ride?'

‘I don't know,' she said, still confused. She'd missed out on riding camp at school one year when she was being dragged from one psychologist to another after her dad and brothers had died. She'd only ever watched other people riding horses. But it looked relaxing enough. ‘You going to give me a bucking bronc?' she asked, getting up.

He thought about it, but only for a second. He couldn't get answers out of a corpse. ‘I could rope you on,' he offered and his eyes dropped automatically to her wrists.

Yeah, they're healing fine, she thought, seeing what he was looking at. She didn't bother to hide them. ‘How about a short horse?' she said, nearing the stables. ‘Less distance to fall.'

‘Shortest here is Fidget,' he said, whistling his stallion over with the mare trotting behind. ‘She's got a light mouth.'

‘You mean she doesn't swear?'

‘I mean she's easy to control. The twins could ride her bareback.'

‘No thanks, I'll have a saddle,' Nikki said, deciding she wanted everything she could get to hang onto.

The stallion arched his neck over Nikki's head as she patted him. He knickered to the mare, who snorted and kicked him sharply in the hindquarters. Nikki jumped away and Locklin pulled her back.

‘She's just playing hard to get,' he said. ‘Jack's only trying to sweet talk her.'

‘I'm not getting on her, she's wild!'

‘It's only because she's in season,' he said, saddling both horses. ‘She's as quiet as a kitten under a rider.'

‘No thanks,' Nikki said, looking at a grey mare in the next yard. ‘I like horses, but not ones that kick. What about that one?'

‘Yeah, she's quiet,' he said, glancing at the old mare that he'd rescued from the meatworks. He'd given her a workout that morning and she seemed sensible enough for a beginner to ride, but he saddled her and got on first again to make sure. He cantered her in the yard with his hands on his hips, using only his knees to steer her around in a figure eight. ‘Wee pet,' he said, and she pulled up beside the stallion nose to tail. Locklin stood in the stirrups and stepped from one horse to the other without touching the ground.

‘Show off,' Nikki said. ‘Join the circus.' But she accepted the challenge and scrambled up.

Locklin leaned forward over Jack's neck and unhooked the gate latch to let her into a larger work arena. He clicked his tongue and the stallion walked forward, pushing the gate open with his chest and holding it with the side of his rump to let her pass.

Nikki circled around the arena slowly at first, using balance skills she'd learned at school gymnastics, while Locklin watched her from the side. He rolled his sore shoulder to wake up the last of the stiffness after his sleep and scratched his leg where the remaining stitches still itched above his knee. He clicked his tongue the next time Nikki came past him and the mare loped obediently into an easy canter under her rider.

‘Anyone can ride if they've got balance and confidence,' he said. ‘It takes light hands, patience and an appreciation of your animal to have real fun.'

So I'm discovering, she thought, amazed by the feel of the big animal moving beneath her.

‘This is just like a rocking horse,' she said circling one way and then the other.

Locklin smiled. He dropped his reins over Jack's neck and pulled his jeans' leg up as far as it would go to pick at the annoying stitches above his knee with his pocketknife and fingernail. This time, they pulled out of his healing flesh and he rubbed the itch away.

‘How'd you do that?' Nikki asked, breaking her circle when she saw his wound. ‘It looks bad.'

‘Nah,' he said, pulling his jeans down before she got too close. ‘Looks worse than it feels.'

‘You should use a clean razor next time you shave your legs then,' she joked. ‘When d'you do it?'

‘Two weeks ago,' he said, stopping himself. He was supposed to be the one asking the questions. ‘What about you?'

‘I always use a clean razor,' she said.

‘That's not what I meant and you know it.'

She shrunk away from him like a turtle retreating into her shell and he shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, watching her. Part of him kept hoping she had nothing to do with his father's death, but she kept doing things and saying things that painted her surname in big, fat, red letters in his head.

‘Don't you have anything you want to say?' he asked, turning his head left and right to look around. ‘There's no one here but us. Now's your chance.'